AN AUGMENTED REALITY INTERFACE PROPOSAL TO IMPROVE AIR TRANSPORTATION SAFETY

摘要

Modern airliners are really UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) that fly with a very limited contribution from the pilots. UAV modern technology is ready to turn to full automatic passenger transportation. The barrier is purely physiological and not technical. This technology is available since a few years. However, the main critical safety issue is still emergency. When everything seems to go wrong, manual control may be the last resource. The emergency, back up, pilot can be comfortably seated several thousands of miles away. His awareness about aircraft situation may be null. He has to grasp immediately the situation and take a proper corrective action. Time is the essential factor. Still, the remote pilot may have not logged many active flying hours. Now, in everyday flight, the normal configuration is AF (Autopilot Flying) + PNF1 (Pilot Not Flying 1) + PM/PNF2 (Pilot Monitoring/Pilot Not Flying 2). The pilot(s) still log(s) these hours as active flying hours, even if, for most of the time, it is the autopilot that is in charge for flying. The pilot training problem is now very serious. Pilots, remote or not, are interfaced to the aircraft system through MFD (Multifunctional Flight Displays): these are Computer Graphic Displays with or without side buttons. What it is seen by the pilot is the GUI (Graphic User Interface): it should then be easy and familiar to the pilots especially when they are called to work. GUI modern WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Augmented Reality and hierarchical techniques should be used, the more familiar to the average person the better. Basic manual training should be provided to pilots to make them ready to handle critical situations. The actual training based on normal automatic procedures and on air traffic handling is now obsolete. In fact, automatic systems and air traffic can be easily handled even without any human intervention. This fact had been demonstrated by the famous US air traffic controller strike back in the Reagan era (1981). In this paper, several issues about the interface are discussed. An additional, non-certified, graphic interface focused on non-standard or emergency condition flight is proposed in this paper. This augmented reality interface is designed for a smooth transition between automatic and human controlled flight, being human control extraordinary for nowadays airliners.